Chapter 1. Introduction
1.3 Organization of the thesis
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use of modality (Choi, 2006), their use of modal verbs needs further investigation.
1.2 Research questions
The study aims to investigate different types, person subjects, and pragmatic functions of the modal hui in Mandarin-speaking children in mother-child conversations. The children were divided into two age groups: a younger group (mean age = 2;11) and an older group (mean age = 4;10). Three research questions were examined in the study.
(1) What is the distribution of different types of the modal hui in the two age groups?
(2) What is the distribution of the person subjects of different types of the modal hui in the two age groups?
(3) What are the pragmatic functions of different types of the modal hui utterances in the two age groups?
1.3 Organization of the thesis
The organization of this study is as follows. Chapter two reviews previous studies on the modality, the acquisition of modality, the modal hui, and the acquisition of the modal hui. Chapter three describes the method used in this study. The results of
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the distribution of the different types, person subjects, and pragmatic functions of the modal hui utterances are presented in chapter four. Chapter five provides discussion and conclusion.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
This study proposes to investigate the use of the modal verb hui in Mandarin-speaking children. This chapter first reviews the notion of modality, which is presented in Section 2.1. Then Section 2.2 presents the acquisition of modality.
The studies on the modal hui and the acquisition of the modal hui are discussed in Section 2.3 and Section 2.4, respectively.
2.1 Modality
Several semantic criteria have been proposed for the definition of modality.
Fleischman (1982, p. 13) referred to modality as something “to do with the speaker’s attitude toward the propositional content of his utterance.” Palmer (1986, p. 16) defined modality as “the grammaticalization of speakers’ (subjective) attitudes and opinions.” The criterion widely accepted was given by Lyons (1977, p. 452), who regarded modality as “the speaker’s opinion or attitude towards the proposition that the sentence expresses or the situation that the proposition describes.” In sum, modality allows speakers to express various attitudes toward a proposition.
In the study of modality, modals are classified into three semantic categories
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(Palmer, 1990; Perkins, 1983): dynamic, deontic, and epistemic. Dynamic modality is concerned with the ability, volition, and willingness of the subject (Palmer, 1990).
Deontic modality has to do with the necessity of “acts performed by morally responsible agents” (Lyons, 1977, p. 823), which is involved with social functions of obligation and permission. Dynamic and deontic modals are classified as agent-oriented modalities which refer to “all modal meanings that predicate conditions on the agent with regard to the completion of an action referred to by the main predicate” (Bybee & Fleishman, 1995, p. 6). When dynamic and deontic modalities lose the speaker’s agency or control, they become epistemic modality and begin to get involved with the speaker’s beliefs (Gerhardt, 1991). Epistemic modality expresses the speaker’s degree of certainty about the truth of a proposition, and is thus associated with the speaker’s knowledge and beliefs (Lyon, 1977), which is speaker-oriented.
2.2 The acquisition of modality
A number of studies have examined the acquisition of modality. Studies on the acquisition of modalities have indicated a tendency that agent-oriented modality is acquired before epistemic modality (e.g. Guo, 1995; Papafragou, 1998; Shatz &
Wilcox, 1991; Stephany, 1986; Wells, 1985). Stephany (1993) pointed out that
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children start out predominantly with non-epistemic acts (i.e. requestive or imperative acts) in social interaction and then begin epistemic acts (i.e. declarative acts). A number of studies have examined the development of modality in English. Shatz and Wilcox (1991) found that English modal verbs begin with agent-oriented expressions, such as expressions of ability and volition. Wells’ studies (1979, 1985) agreed with this general development pattern, that is, children begin expressing agent-oriented modality before epistemic modality. He found that children used the expression of ability/ inability (using can/can’t) at around the age of two, and then children started to slowly produce may and might to express possibility at around the age of three. He reported that inferential uses of modals (e.g. will) appeared even later in development.
However, O’Neill and Atance (2000) argued that children began to use epistemic modals earlier than what previous studies had claimed. They found that children used epistemic modal terms productively to express uncertainty from around two years of age. Guo (1995) argued that the semantic development of modal verbs started from the three year olds’ physical abilitative meaning, continued through to the five year olds’ deontic meaning, then to the seven year olds’ epistemic-like meaning. Besides, some studies have shown that the frequency data in the use of modalities is consistent among children (Bassano, 1996; Torr, 1998; Wells, 1979). They all drew a conclusion that the expressions of agent-oriented modality are consistently more frequent than
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epistemic modality in the child’s speech.
There seems to be a specific relationship between specific type of modality and subjecthood. Studies have found that children have the tendency to produce agent-oriented modal verbs with the first person subject. For instance, Pea and Mawby (1981) found that children used agent-oriented modals with the first person to express volition. In the early period of development, O’Neill and Atance (2000) reported that children used the first person subject to express future intention. In contrast, children use epistemic terms (e.g. might) mainly with the third person subject to express events and states of third-party entities (Bassano, 1996; O’Neill &
Atance, 2000).
There also seems to be a relation between specific type of modality and sentence types. Pea and Mawby (1981) found that most of the modals were used in the affirmative (e.g. gonna). Negative modals were used only to express constraints on action or an unwillingness to act (e.g. can’t, won’t) at the speech time. It has been noted that modal terms in grammatically appropriate utterances appear during the period from when a child is two to three years old (Bliss, 1988). Children tend to be conservative in the use of modals in syntactic structures compared with semantic development of modalities. Shatz and Wilcox (1991, p. 331) pointed out that “while modal vocabulary growth proceeds fairly rapidly during this early period (e.g.
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can/can’t, wanna, won’t), the range of syntactic constructions in which the modals
appear changes somewhat more slowly.” For instance, early modals (e.g. can, will) are all produced in limited syntactic environments (i.e. mainly in simple declaratives) (Shatz & Wilcox, 1991). O’Neill and Atance (2000) reported that the productive construction type with modal forms started at around 3;6 and children’s syntax became more complex (e.g. modals with complement clauses) at this age.
In the studies on the development of modality in Mandarin-speaking children, Hsu (2011) investigated the functions, grammatical patterns, and input of yao. The data were spontaneous speech of three children aged from 1;5 to 3;5. The result showed that the emerging order of the three functions of yao was: dynamic > deontic >
epistemic. It was found that children first acquired the function of expressing request or volition, the function of denoting obligation or necessity was the second acquired and the function of making inference of an event was the third. As for grammatical patterns used in expressing different functions of yao, the function of expressing request or volition was expressed with various types of grammatical patterns, whereas the other two functions were expressed in a limited range of grammatical patterns.
Children went through an “old form and new function mapping” process in expanding the use of yao from one function to another. In addition, the use of yao in the input provided scaffolding for children.
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Guo (1994) claimed that the meanings of modals are rooted in the social, interactional functions of language. The use of modal expressions is part of acquiring competency in discourse interaction. He examined the sentence forms, semantic meanings, and discourse functions of Mandarin Chinese modal auxiliaries among children aged 3, 5, and 7. He investigated the different uses of six modal auxiliaries:
yao “want”, xiang “desire”, yong “need”, neng “can”, hui “know-how-to”, and dei
“hafta”. Forty specific discourse functions were analyzed and categorized into two major categories: interpersonal-oriented functions and informational-oriented functions. For example, the study of the modal neng showed the acquisition order of the different meanings from physical ability to permission to epistemic uses. All three meanings serve a common interpersonal function in discourse: a challenge to the addressee. The change in the meaning of neng is primarily motivated by this interpersonal function of challenge (Guo, 1995, p. 207).
He used the term “interpersonal-oriented function” in the sense of interpersonal function, as proposed by Lyons (1977), namely, how the speaker intends to influence
the mental state or behavior of the addressee. The utterance is mainly used to modify or regulate the actional behavior of the participants of the interaction, either the addressee, the speaker, or the other parties present. This can be the initiation or prevention of others’ action (e.g. request and prohibition), keeping oneself from being
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affected by others (e.g. refusal), provision for others (e.g. offer) or justification of or comment on one’s own action (e.g. self action). At the “informational-oriented function” level, the main purpose of making the utterance is to impart information rather than modifying behavior, such as reporting. Guo (1994) proposed that interpersonal-oriented functions were developed earlier than informational-oriented functions, which was related to the cognitive development of children.
2.3 Research on the modal hui
Tang and Tang (1997, p. 177) pointed out three forms of Chinese modality: modal particles, modal adverbs, and modal verbs or adjectives. Basically, modal verbs possess three features of verbs (Huang, 1999; Li & Thompson, 1981): modals can stand alone as a short answer, be negated, and form an A-not-A question. However, there are some properties of modals which differ from verbs: Modals must co-occur with a verb (or, at least, one must be understood from the context), modals do not take aspect markers, modals cannot be nominalized, modals cannot appear before the subject, and modals cannot have objects. Thus, the modal hui conforms to the syntactic characteristics listed above and is classified as a modal verb by the study of Tang and Tang (1997).
Following Palmer’s (1990) frame in addressing English model verbs, Tiee (1985)
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classified Chinese modality into three kinds: dynamic, deontic, and epistemic modalities. First, the dynamic modal hui refers to the physical or mental ability of the subject. This physical or mental ability is innate to or acquired by animate creatures (Chang, 2001; Huang, 1999). Second, the deontic modal hui can denote a commissive, in which the speaker is committing him/herself to ensuring that an event will take place (Searle, 1983). The modal hui in its deontic sense denotes two uses: promise and threat (Hsieh, 2005, 2006; Huang, 1999). When what the speaker undertakes to do is welcome to the addressee, it is viewed as a promise. When it is not welcome to the addressee, it is viewed as a threat. Third, the epistemic modal hui shows the speaker’s judgment of possibility or probability of the propositional content. Thus, the modal sense of epistemic hui is judgmental, in which the speaker has either a stronger or weaker degree of certainty to the proposition (Chang, 2001).
2.4 The acquisition of the modal hui
After a brief introduction of the modal hui, the following section presents studies on the acquisition of the modal hui. In terms of the acquisition of the modal hui, few studies (e.g. Guo, 1994) have been investigated. Guo (1994) examined Mandarin-speaking children’s use of the modal hui during peer plays at the age of three, five, and seven in Beijing. As mentioned in Section 2.2, he suggested that the
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semantic development of the modal verb started from the three year olds’ abilitative meaning, continued through to the five year olds’ deontic meaning, then to the seven year olds’ epistemic meaning. His analysis showed that the modal hui was primarily a dynamic modal; that is, the basic meaning of the modal hui expressed the notion of ability. It was found that children used the dynamic modal hui utterances for an interpersonal function. For example, the children used the modal hui utterances when they tried to show off their abilities to their peers. He suggested children are sensitive to the discourse functional aspects of modals.
In Guo’s (1994) study, he proposed the functions of the three types of the modal hui utterances. First, the functions of the dynamic modal hui utterances included:
requesting goods and services, complaint, refusal of request, rejection of prohibition, reporting events or actions, and value judgment. The most frequent function was value judgment, which was used to affect the hearers’ beliefs and attitudes. In Guo’s data, as for the functions of the deontic modal hui utterances, request and complaint were found. Only a small amount of the deontic modal hui was used in Mandarin, thus there were too few tokens for even tentative conclusions. Finally, the functions of the epistemic modal hui utterances included: argument, puzzlement, speculation, conclusion, and complaint. Guo’s classification of some functions of the epistemic modal hui utterances involved only few examples. For instance, there was only one
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utterance with the modal hui for speculation, conclusion, and complaint. It was found that the epistemic modal hui utterance was highly correlated with argumentative or disputative contexts.
Guo also proposed that the order of acquisition of the modal hui was similar to other Chinese modals, which seems to match the cognitive development of children;
that is, interpersonal-oriented functions were acquired earlier than informational-oriented functions. He pointed out that children used the modal hui first for interpersonal-oriented functions. If the developmental sequence indicated the relative difficulty involved in learning modals, then it showed that the use of the modals in interpersonal-oriented functions may be easier than in informational-oriented functions for children. Because modals used in informational-oriented functions were more opaque and less natural, they presented a greater cognitive task. However, modals used in interpersonal-oriented functions were more straightforward and natural; therefore, they presented less of a cognitive challenge. Hence, the results suggested that children acquired interpersonal-oriented functions earlier than informational-oriented functions as demonstrated by their use of the modal hui utterances.
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Chapter 3 Methodology
3.1 Participants and data
The data examined in this study were adopted from the database of the Language Acquisition Lab1 at National Chengchi University. The participants in this study were 8 Mandarin-speaking children (5 boys and 3 girls) and their mothers, who all lived in Taipei. The data of natural mother-child conversation were video-recorded at the child’s home. The total length of recordings was sixteen hours, with two hours of data with each child. According to previous literature, modal expressions appear in children’s conversation as early as 2;6 (Kuczaj, 1977; Kuczaj & Maratsos, 1975).
Thus, children aged from 2;7 to 5;4 years old were chosen. It was further divided into two age groups. Group I consisted of four children ranging in age from 2;7 to 3;2 (mean age = 2;11; two boys and two girls) as a younger group. Group II had four children from 4;0 to 5;4 (mean age = 4;10; three boys and one girl) as an older group.
Table 1 presents the subject information in the two age groups.
1 The lab is directed by Professor Chiung-chih Huang. I am deeply grateful to Professor Huang for her generosity in sharing the data.
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Subject Information in the Two Age Groups Group I Group II
The eight children’s data included various activities, such as toy play, book reading, role play, drawing, etc. The recordings were transcribed in CHAT format using the CLAN program (MacWhinney, 2000). Utterances with the modal hui not for investigation were listed below: repetition2 (19 tokens), imitation (4 tokens), ungrammatical (2 tokens), and unintelligible (22 tokens) utterances. After excluding these utterances (47 tokens), a total number of 311 modal hui were observed in the two age groups. There were 129 modal hui in Group I (younger) and 182 modal hui in Group II (older), respectively.
2 Repetition with the modal hui which occurs within an utterance was counted once. For example, in the following, the modal hui was only counted once because ta hui “it can” was repeated in the utterance.
*BUO: <它 會> [/] 它 會 # 飛 起來 [% shooting the toy plane to the sofa]!
< ta hui > [/] ta hui # fei qilai [% shooting the toy plane to the sofa]!
it can it can fly up
“It can fly.”
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The data were analyzed to investigate the types, person subjects, and pragmatic functions of the modal hui in the children’s speech.3 The modal hui can be divided into three types of meaning: dynamic, deontic, and epistemic (Hsieh, 2005, 2006; Wu, 2009).
The dynamic modal hui is concerned with the ability of the subject (Chang, 2001;
Hsieh, 2005, 2006; Huang, 1999; Wu, 2009). For instance, the modal hui in Example 1 was identified as the dynamic use. SEN and his mother were playing baby yoga cards. SEN tried to do the yoga action shown on the card, and he successfully turned a somersault. Then, his mother praised SEN for his extraordinary ability. SEN was proud of being able to turn a somersault and used hui utterance to show his ability.
Example 1 (SEN, 2;7)
%act: SEN is turning a somersault
*MOT: /hong -: honghonghonghong/ 對 -: 好 厲害!
“I could turn a somersault just now.”
3 In some cases, the token of the modal hui may seem to carry more than one type. However, in the study, only the primary type was coded. Thus, each token was coded as only one type. So is the case in the coding of pragmatic functions.
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According to Searle’s (1983) classification of speech acts, a commissive demonstrates that the speaker is committing him/herself to ensuring that an event will take place. As mentioned earlier, when what the speaker undertakes to do is welcome to the addressee, it is viewed as a promise (Hsieh, 2006; Huang, 1999). In Example 2, the deontic modal hui expresses commissive. XUN and his mother were playing with toy cars and XUN promised that he would definitely save his toy cars while they dropped into the river.
Example 2 (XUN, 4;0)
*MOT: 你 不 救 它們 的話.
ni bu jiu tamen dehua.
you NEG save them if
“If you didn’t save them,”
*MOT: 你 的 車車 是不是 要 說.
“You didn’t save me. You didn’t save me.”
*XUN: 我 一定 會 <救 它> [>]! wo yiding hui <jiu ta> [>]!
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“I will definitely save it.”
*MOT: <那 你 不 是> [<] 好 主人.
<na ni bu shi> [<] hao zhuren.
DM you NEG COP good owner
“You are not a good owner.”
The epistemic modal hui shows the speaker’s judgment of the possibility of the propositional content (Chang, 2001; Hsieh, 2005, 2006; Wu, 2009), as illustrated in Example 3. XUN was putting a remote control into the drawer. He replied to his mother that it was possible that his younger brother would play with the remote control in secret.
“Ah, you shouldn’t tell your younger brother the remote control is here.”
*MOT: 知道 嗎?
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because he will stealthily play remote control
“Because he will play with the remote control in secret.”
To ensure the reliability for the coding of the types of the modal hui, one fourth of the data were randomly selected and were coded by another coder. Cohen’s Kappa
To ensure the reliability for the coding of the types of the modal hui, one fourth of the data were randomly selected and were coded by another coder. Cohen’s Kappa